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New iTunes Offerings Raise Privacy Worries

DRM-free tracks contain purchaser's name, email address

By Sam Gale Rosen,  Newser Staff

Posted Jun 5, 2007 11:23 AM CDT

(Newser) – Apple's announcement that iTunes would make DRM-free music available omitted a significant detail: The personal information embedded in regular tracks is also in the non-privacy-protected tunes. That raises privacy concerns, the AP reports, including the possibility that the unencrypted information might make it easier for music companies to crack down on illegal online sharing.

"It's not as bad as leaking your credit card number or your Social Security number, but it's still a pretty careless security leak," says a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group. DRM-free music can be freely copied and played anywhere, and Apple's reasoning for making users identifiable isn't clear; the company hasn't commented.

Apple computer CEO Steve Jobs, right, with Damon Alban, center, of the pop group Blurr, and Eric Nicoli, CEO EMI Group look on in the lobby of the EMI  record company headquarters in London, Monday April 2, 2007. Jobs was at the launch of digital rights management (DRM) free recordings...
Apple computer CEO Steve Jobs, right, with Damon Alban, center, of the pop group Blurr, and Eric Nicoli, CEO EMI Group look on in the lobby of the EMI record company headquarters in London, Monday April...   (Associated Press)
hoto/Jacques Brinon, file)
hoto/Jacques Brinon, file)   (Associated Press)
In a file photo Nessia Frazier listens on a Apple Computer iPod nano at the Apple store in Palo Alto, Calif., Monday, July 17, 2006. The recent rollout of songs without copy protection software at Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store has given consumers new flexibility, but questions emerge over the...
In a file photo Nessia Frazier listens on a Apple Computer iPod nano at the Apple store in Palo Alto, Calif., Monday, July 17, 2006. The recent rollout of songs without copy protection software at Apple...   (Associated Press)
Apple(R) today launched iTunes(R) Plus, DRM-free music tracks from EMI featuring high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings for $1.29 per song.  (PRNewsFoto/Apple)
Apple(R) today launched iTunes(R) Plus, DRM-free music tracks from EMI featuring high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings for $1.29...   (Associated Press)
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